1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to printers. In particular, the present invention relates to a printer having a control panel capable of facilitating user manipulation of printer function as well as displaying information which is of importance to the user, but unrelated to printer function. More particularly, the present invention relates to a printer capable of displaying useful Internet-derived information as well as information regarding printer function using a display screen included in the printer control panel.
2. Background of the Invention
Printers are well known computer peripherals widely used in both home and business computing environments. State of the art printers offer ever increasing levels of speed, print quality, and easily manipulated format options. Despite, their usefulness, however, printers generally sit idle for most of their service lives. In fact, it is not uncommon for printers to sit idle over 95% of the time they are in service, and, when idle, the value of state of the art printers is generally limited to their ability to process future print jobs as needed. It would therefore be desirable to increase the utility of printers by reducing the amount of idle time.
One approach to improving reducing printer idle time is to provide multi-function printers that integrate one or more additional document processing functions. For example, multi-function printers which integrate copier, scanner, or facsimile capabilities, are well known in the art. However, even multi-function printers sit idle for a significant portion of their service lives, and, as is true of known devices including only printer function, the value of an idle multi-function printer is generally limited to its ability to process future documents as needed. Thus, it would be an improvement in the art to provide a printer offering significant utility even when not executing a print job or other integrated document processing function.